Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Session 2- Day 3


Nancy has been teaching the groups about luna moths this week. She brought in the book Luna moths by Sandra Markle to read and show pictures to the children. The book explains the differences between moths and butterflies and focuses on the moth’s life cycle. Nancy showed them how to build a mobile with cut outs of luna moths, caterpillars, oak leaves, blue jays and acorns. The groups decorated the cutouts with rhinestones and glitter.

 
The Red group made birds out of Model Magic clay they worked on with Anne. The group finished their clay birds by coloring the bodies and adding eyes then feathers.


The Blue group has been making flags all week of these four elements: earth, water, fire and air. Using cloth the group made earth and water flags on Monday and Tuesday. Today they are making flags incorporating fire elements. Tomorrow they will finish the project by making air flags. In the manner of Tibetan prayer flags, they will all be displayed for their parents on Friday.

 
Emily taught the groups how to tie dye. She shows them a few different ways to fold the shirts in order to create a certain spiraled pattern.


 
Today the Purple group created landscapes. They picked a place they dream about visiting one day then sketched the landscape with pencil. Finally, the group enjoyed coloring their landscape with oil pastels. 



The Green group is making paper mache hot air balloons. After the paper dries around the balloon, they will paint them and connect it to their weaved basket they made from a Dixie cup.












Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Session 2- Day 1


Session 2 is underway!

Masterpieces in the making!
Every camper gets to make something out of clay.


We're painting flying creatures and learning about color theory and paint mixing all at the same time.


Another clay master in the making! (Her dad is one of the CAC's most beloved ceramics teachers).

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Session 1 Day 3


The Blue group is making wings to wear on Friday to show off to their parents. Colton is making jet packs for his wings! Others are cutting up pieces of different colored construction paper to make a feathered effect.

                On Monday the Blue group painted pictures inspired from the award winning book “Tar Beach.” The book is about a girl that dreams she can fly. The story tells of her adventures as she flies all over the world. The children painted pictures from a bird's eye view flying over significant landmarks such as: Pyramids in Egypt, city skyscrapers and deserts.


Working with the Fly High theme, the Orange group built sculptures of things that fly. Each child thought of their own idea and created their flying object out of wood.  Once their sculpture was finished they all enjoyed painting it.

The finished projects:



The Yellow group created small versions of hot air balloons! They blew up a balloon and used their creativity to design it. After, they used tape around the center of the balloon to hold string which connects to a plastic cup. The string is used to dangle the plastic cup by poking holes below the rim and tying the string through the holes. The cup looks like the basket of the hot air balloon.


Today the Turquoise group is painting their butterflies which they began on Monday. Pat helped them begin this project by drawing a butterfly on a piece of paper then tracing over it with black Elmer’s glue. Once it dried they painted in the butterfly to make it come to life.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Session 1 -Day 1

Summer Spree 2012 got off to a great start with lots of creative energy and campers full of ideas!

Our special project this session is the Phantastic Phoenix sculpture project with Bob Deane and Drew Arata.  Today the Turquoise group was the first to begin the making of the phoenix. Along with brainstorming ideas about what objects will make the certain parts of the body, the group collected items such as twigs and acorns which will potentially become part of the wings or an eyeball. The entire phoenix will be built out of bits and pieces from nature. A designated area was chosen to start the project and each group will continue to build around it.


Each group worked on a different part of the Phoenix project.  Some kids even "excavated" the surrounding area to locate raw materials (like the ones below)  for using in building the sculpture.


While the Purple group was eating their snacks together, a student made a crane with her napkin. The group thought it would be fun for her to teach them how to do it themselves. So, after their snack time she taught them step by step how to make their own paper crane.

Keeping with the Fly High theme, many of the groups worked on projects about flying things. The Green group drew and colored hot air balloons with pencil, crayons and markers and then painted them with water colors. The kids were very excited by the bright colors of the watercolor paint. This project was to prep the children for the next couple of days. They will be taking actual balloons and covering them with paper mache so when it dries they are able to paint their own 3-dimentional hot air balloon.


Many groups made personalized folders which will be used to put their works of art in and keep them safe. Campers drew their names on the front and decorated the folders with pictures of things that fly. Since the theme of this year’s Summer Spree is “Flying High”, prior to starting the project, the group wrote down ten things that fly then discussed what each person came up with.

At Summer Spree we do all sorts of fun stuff that you may not get the chance to do any other place, like making our own "flubber" out of borax and Elmer’s glue.


The week is off to a great start.